November 6, 2001 at 9 AM

He Was My Type of Writer

Fittingly, the marketing copy sounds like just the sort of thing Richler himself would have conjured up at his satirical best:

The Richler typeface was commissioned in memory of Mordecai Richler and created by Canadian type designer Nick Shinn. It is an original face, full of personality in the details, yet smooth in the composite effect. Up close, each letter is a study in thematic style, with a subtle, firmly crafted, slightly offbeat quality that mocks both artful pretension and mindless conformity.

To make things worse, they’ve gone and listed other fonts named after literary figures. While Richler was indeed an esteemed writer, I’m sure he would be the first to be embarrassed to be on the same list as Chaucer, Dante, Swift and Byron — all of whom were dead for scores of years before anyone thought it would be ‘cute’ to characterize them typographically.